


Hope You've Got a Minute

by lady_ragnell



Series: Prompt Reposts [4]
Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Epistolary, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-04
Updated: 2014-08-04
Packaged: 2018-02-11 16:21:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2074851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lady_ragnell/pseuds/lady_ragnell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Joan receives an unexpected message from New York's newest superhero.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hope You've Got a Minute

**Author's Note:**

> Edited and reposted from a tumblr ficlet. This could easily have become a novel, but I hope it satisfies as is!
> 
>  **Warnings:** reference to violence, exsanguination, character death. Sherlock's deductions being kind of creepy over e-mail
> 
> Title from "The Long Haul" by NO, mostly because the song appeared in the show.

_A message for the Healer:_

_I must talk to you regarding your powers and a woman you might or might not have healed approximately three months ago. Respond at your earliest convenience to my throwaway e-mail at 1ha3uy1943Ucbpi@gmail. My word that this is not a setup._

_The Mastermind_

Joan stares at the Craigslist posting for a long, long time. It's come in a worried e-mail from Alfredo, one of the few people who knows her in and out of costume, and she wouldn't even consider it if he didn't think it was legitimate, but she doesn't know what it means that he thinks it is, or what to do about it either way.

The Mastermind is an unknown quantity. He's new to New York, his first headline only a few weeks in the past, and he obviously has a grudge, a reason to take to these streets now. All she knows about him—all anyone knows about him—is that he finds criminals through grim, unflinching detective work and then dumps them at the police station with a note explaining their crimes, and as often as not a taped confession as well, and that he chose his name, that _compliments of The Mastermind_ was typed at the bottom of his first dossier like he never even thought of letting the press name him like almost everyone else does. Joan doesn't like ego. There's a reason she works alone.

Not many people ask for her, though. They like her, they need her, but if someone calls for the hero, if there's someone who wants her specifically, it means that something has already gone wrong, and no one wants that. The Healer isn't there to track down criminals, not often. She's there to patch up anyone hurt, masked or unmasked, criminal or vigilante or police, and to make sure that hospital staffs know which ones are which. Nobody asks too many questions, because the answers too often remind supers of just what kind of damage their battles do.

It's the curiosity, someone actually asking for her help, that makes Joan generate a throwaway address of her own, a string of letters and numbers she gets from smashing on the keyboard as randomly as she can. She spends a while lingering on the message, trying to say enough to help without saying too much, if he's not on the side of good after all.

 _This is the Healer,_ she finally writes, _even though I bet you've had plenty of e-mails saying the same thing, including from the police. I can't promise to answer all your questions, and I won't meet, but if you're trying to solve a case, I'll do what I can._

She receives an e-mail within twenty minutes.

_Doctor, I'm glad you received my message. The powered in this city need a more convenient way to communicate, though that's a project for another time. My question is simple: I wish to know if you had any contact with a woman approximately three months ago, blonde, in her late twenties, possibly suffering from exsanguination._

Joan remembers the case, police and supers alike baffled at the rash of cases that had Joan and everyone else arriving too late. She only managed to heal one of the victims, and he didn't know anything concrete. It's a niggling mystery, one she returns to sometimes, and if the Mastermind wants to try it, she's not going to stop him. _I'm not a doctor. And I don't think so. You must be aware that there was a powered individual exsanguinating people there were hits out on, but none of the victims I saw or treated match your description. Was that your only question?_

This e-mail takes an hour to arrive. _On the whole, I always have more than one question, but this will do for the present. I would at some point like to ask you about the mechanics of your powers for a private database I maintain for my own education, but that isn't urgent. I would be interested in hearing more about the other exsanguination cases, though, Doctor (which I call you from respect, of course. You may no longer be a practicing physician, but you earned the title on your own merits, without your powers)._

Joan almost stops e-mailing at that, and she has to take a deep breath before she forces herself to answer. If nothing else, she needs to know if her cover is blown or if the Mastermind is making guesses. _Is that your superpower? Knowing everything? Or are you threatening me, saying you've done your research and won't turn me over if I give you the information you want?_

His next e-mail doesn't come for seven hours, long enough to make her nervous before she reminds herself that it's daytime, and he could easily be at a day job (though fewer powered individuals can keep those than comic books suggest) or asleep if their work has made him nocturnal. Joan is relieved when she opens her laptop after getting some rest herself and finds another message from him. _Quite the contrary. I won't call you Doctor if it makes you uncomfortable, but nor will I call you “the Healer” over e-mail, the pageantry of our chosen vocation is both tiresome and ridiculous. And no, my superpower has very little to do with my deductive prowess. In fact, I use my superpower in my daily career with no masks at all. Intelligence, of course, is deemed far more dangerous. As for you, I would of course turn no so-called “superhero” over to the police, especially one who helps all without discrimination. Any deductions I make about you are merely observations: for instance, while you attended medical school and were an MD for some time, you left the profession when you began to have to use your superpowers more often, and when you found yourself far too impacted by the knowledge of which patients were criminals, no doubt why you are stubbornly neutral now. I can make any number of deductions about you, but I would prefer solid information so I can save my skills for information that must be inferred rather than given. Not personal, of course, other than the mechanics of your powers._

Joan e-mails Alfredo first, once she's stopped staring at the message. Most of the supers in town know and like Alfredo, and he's the most likely to know if the Mastermind has something against Joan, if she couldn't heal someone he loved or something. Alfredo e-mails back right away, with no more information than anyone in the city has: that the Mastermind has some kind of mission in the city, but that he doesn't seem to have any particular enemies among the supers. The best case scenario, she knows and he admits, is that Joan is just part of his mission right now.

It's not safe, and she knows it. The smartest course of action is to delete her account and avoid the Mastermind until he's moved his attention elsewhere. But if there’s one thing that gets Joan in trouble, moves her beyond just healing people and into finding criminals, it’s that if something makes her curious, she finds it hard to let go, and the exsanguination cases caught her interest months ago.

She waits a full twenty-four hours before she sends a message back. She spends a night on the streets, stretching her powers thin healing people enough to keep them steady and then rushing them to the hospital, and when she comes back, she opens her e-mail. _If I had files on the cases you're interested in, and I didn't want to trust them on the internet, would you have a drop point for them?_

Joan goes to bed after that, wakes after ten hours still aching and tired, and finds a message as soon as she checks for one. _There's a pet psychic, a Mr. Holmes, living in a brownstone (address to follow from a separate e-mail address). If you leave the files in front of the beehive on his roof, they will find their way to me._

There's a safe in one of Joan's kitchen cabinets. It isn't the one where she keeps important documents and what few valuable she has, or even the one where she keeps her costume and gear when she's off-duty. This one holds the files for the cases she's allowed herself to get curious about but still can't solve, and it only takes her a few moments to find the ones from the exsanguination cases, her notes on the victims, the methods, the headlines from England that imply the perpetrator was probably there at one point as well. She's never showed anyone, even Alfredo, the files she keeps before.

This time, she packs them into a plastic shopping bag and sends a message to Alfredo letting him know that if she doesn't check in by midnight he should search for her, and then she stands in front of her other safe for a long enough time to think it through, and for the Mastermind to send her the address as promised.

Joan takes a deep breath and puts on her suit.


End file.
